Changes are Coming!

I'm excited to announce that there will be some major changes in our forums in the near future.

You might notice on the lower right corner of the forum pages "powered by Lithium." We've been using Lithium to power our forums for 8 years. This fall, we'll be transitioning to a new provider - Vanilla Forums.

For most users, this change will mean a new layout and interface, as well as new options when posting. Vanilla offers some tools we are not utilizing now, such as a Question and Answer forum, Idea forums, and a variety of fun new posting options.

Our goal is to make the forum experience cleaner and easier for users. In particular, we want to ensure someone coming to Lulu for the first time with a question or concern can 1) find answers quickly; and 2) enjoy productive interactions with Lulu admins and our established authors.

We'll make this update sometime early in November, and over the coming weeks, I may message individuals with an invitation to check out the new forum so we can get some feedback. If anyone is interested in having an early look, private message me and I'll add you to our list.

In this thread, I'll be available to answer questions anyone might have and to provide additional details as they become available. Please ask away!

The updates we're performing will only impact the forums and knowledge base pages. If you're book isn't appearing on the Lulu bookstore, I would first double check that the book is marked as "General Access" in your account. If it is and the book is still not appearing, you'll want to contact support so we can get that taken care of for you.

My main drive behind finding a replacement was to make the entire experience better for new users without diminishing the aspects our regulars have come to expect. Plus the platform we're moving too is a fair bit more adaptable, so we can make changes as we need.

We're doing a final test migration either tonight or tomorrow. Anyone that has been viewing the new site might see some changes, and there is a good chance the test forum I set up will vanish. Fear not! It's just us adding the last bits of data

Alright folks, we've got all the data moved in testing! Anyone I've given access too will see a lot of changes over the next few days, so if you pop in there and it look weird/ugly, that's just us doing some work in there.

As of right now, we're planning to perform the final migration on November 13. This means the forums will go to 'Read only" on the 13th and we're aiming to be up and running no later than Nov 16.